Andy DickinsonProfileAndy is a Senior lecturer in Journalism at Manchester Metropolitan University where he is the program lead for the MA Multimedia Journalism.

MOJO on Android?

30 March 2016 Reading Time:

I’m spending some time with Android doing audio and video. I know, why would I do that when there’s the iPhone?

You get strong vibes from the community that Android is very unfriendly to ‪#‎mojo‬. I’m often suspicious of that kind of thing on the basis that’s it’s often over-familiarity with other platforms that makes for some entrenched thinking. But that assumption aside. Given that nearly 50% of my j-students are non-Apple it’s a concern for me that the response to #mojo issues is ‘wait for an upgrade and buy an iPhone’. This industry doesn’t do waiting very well.

Don’t get me wrong, I wrote this on an iPhone and will no doubt check in later on an iPad. I’m not having a downer on iOS or Mojo for that matter (although what’s this obsession with plugging things in and bolting stuff on? Seems a bit Freudian if you ask me!). It’s more that it feels like it’s becoming a singular platform phenomenon. In effect we have iMOJO but without theMOJroid to balance it out. It’s at risk of creating another exclusivity that we don’t need in journalism.

That said, and to be honest I have to say Android is proving hard to like. Some of it is me; that over familiarity with Apple thing. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve gone to click the home button for example. I know I’m out of a comfort zone. But some of it is just the strangeness of Android. As a user, it feels like an OS where all the parts are designed by different people and then bolted together…Oh. Wait…

Anyway, perhaps the best I can say at the moment is that it’s not going out of its way to win my support, but perhaps its not as actively difficult as people might say.

Let’s say we are at the ‘its just different’ stage.

I’m not advocating that we all make MOJroid work (or, God forbid, adopt the term) but maybe ‘mojo’ could work a little harder at alternatives, stretch the comfort zone a little. Perhaps different is OK. Supply and demand and all that.

I’ll keep you informed of my progress but in the meantime. Tried and tested so far (with the help of the amazing Mr @documentally) are: